THE STRUGGLES OF A WANNA-BE ANGEL - Part 2

2. ACCIDENTS HAPPEN    (Kelly)

The adorable two-year-old was singing again. We all had to stop talking about our adult concerns — I happened to be talking with my sister Sheri about the politics of school funding, that being of interest because I’m a teacher, and she counsels people in prison who are generally poorly educated — and show our admiration, if not our veneration, of this precocious child.

Not that she wasn’t cute. She made us all smile with her hugs and little stories about her stuffed animals and the way she said “babbit” instead of rabbit. It’s just that my husband Bill and I had moved on from the natural method of making babies through the tedious technical routes, and were now considering the nerve-racking and humiliating process of trying to adopt. So sometimes when little Angelica performed, I cried, but only in my sisters’ bedrooms, or my mom’s, if we were at her house.

The mother of this little blessing, my sister-in-law Melanie, was as serene and self-confident as a summer breeze. If she ever complained, it was something like, “She potty trained so quickly, I had to look everywhere for a place to donate all the diapers I had left over.”

She had recovered from having had the words “WHITE SUPREMACIST” scrawled on her door one early morning several years ago when I had, after brief consideration, determined that she needed to be brought down a notch. It had to have been the devil guiding my hand that day, because she was pretty upset; hurt, really, and I felt pretty guilty. Very guilty. But she only redoubled her efforts to be the most perfect, nonbiased white person on the face of the earth. Also, the most generous, the most empathic, the most good parent-y human being ever, which anyone would know after talking with her for five minutes. Having been raised a Christian and being a good person myself, I should have remembered that the Lord said, “Vengeance is mine. I shall repay.” I have yet to see Him repay her for her self-righteousness, but I sometimes wonder if our failure to conceive may be His idea.

Now that her offspring had finished her show and made the rounds for kisses and hugs, Melanie settled herself next to my father, a crotchety old man if there ever was one. As usual, he was complaining.

“Church has changed,” he was saying, shaking his head. “Who on earth’s idea was it to bring in guitars? Electric guitars, drums! As if God wants to go to a rock concert. As if I want to go to a rock concert. I’m thinking about trying the Holy Rollers. I don’t think they have electric instruments in their church. I’m not enthusiastic about speaking in tongues, though. Bunch of mumbo-jumbo. I don’t know; if I don’t put up with it, I’ll probably go to hell for missing church, and who do you think I’ll see down there? Those dang wanna-be rock stars, I’ll bet. If anyone belongs in hell it’s them. Just my luck if that’s how the Lord chooses to punish me.”

Everyone had heard this complaint for years, including Melanie, but, unlike the rest of us, she was still capable of laughing, putting her hand on his forearm, and saying, “Bless you, Pop Pop, the Lord knows your heart. When your time comes — a long time from now — you’ll be listening to the angels in heaven, harps and all, and not no rock ‘n’ roll band.” Another way she was different from us was, she liked to lapse into vernacular. To call her a little affected would be like calling Judas a little unreliable, so I won’t. Judge not that ye be not judged. My dad was completely taken by her.

So here we all were, at my sister Jocelyn’s house, stuck in this treacly ambience, trying to have conversations while Melanie’s little angel played an adorably loud and discordant song on her toy piano, when we heard a scream through the back door. It was like the backyard was a vacuum sucking us into it, we were out there so fast. Turned out Jocelyn’s boy Martin had climbed up into the walnut tree and fallen out. Probably wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d fallen in the dirt, but Angelica’s tricycle was there under the tree, wedged against the concrete patio in such a way that it didn’t budge when Martin’s head smacked into it. The child lay motionless in the dirt, and the split second it took for Jocelyn to kneel and gingerly shake his shoulder, and for us to hear his faint moan, was the longest split second we ever lived through. Jocelyn screamed “call 911,” although all the men except my dad had their phones out and were already calling. More anguished seconds while the guys sorted it out. Martin’s blood was mixing with the dirt, and he hadn’t opened his eyes. My mom went into the house to get a couple towels, and then, eons later, I directed the paramedics through the back gate to the scene of the catastrophe. They got Martin to blink his eyes, and ascertained that he could move all his limbs, but his arm must have hurt a lot, because he set up a howl that only faded when they put him in the ambulance with his mom. Then, after a subtle power struggle to determine who would be driving to the hospital and who would be relegated to the back seat, we all trundled into our cars and left for the emergency room.

I don’t know how, but Melanie arrived first, and notified the woman behind the desk that we were Martin’s family, and that they should let us know at the first possible moment how he was doing. She was very sober in reporting her completion of this duty, but I could see her smiling inside, so proud of herself. Jocelyn’s husband Dan arrived in the waiting room and told us that Martin had a concussion, and seemed okay mentally, but with who knew how many bones broken, or how many stitches needed. Jocelyn had stayed with Martin.

 We all sat down and proceeded to look as worried as we felt. Sheri called her older kids at their friends’ houses. Dan paced around the waiting room a couple times and sat down. Angelica was napping in my brother Larry’s lap. After a while, Jocelyn came out to tell us Martin would be going to surgery to have a pin put in his arm—the only bone broken, praise the Lord--and sat down and had a quiet cry, Sheri on one side and Mom on the other. More sitting and worrying; then, one by one, we took out our phones and started playing games, checking the stock market, or looking at Facebook, as our habits dictated. Everyone but Melanie, who sat perfectly still, darting her eyes around the room and moving her lips at intervals.

After several minutes of this, Melanie stood up. Although casually dressed in jeans and a T-shirt like the rest of us, she looked conspicuously elegant among the McCabes: perfectly made up--unnecessarily, because her skin is flawless and she has a tan that says “yes, I’m outdoorsy, but I don’t stupidly risk skin cancer”--and with her perfectly tousled hair pinned up on the back of  her head.

She looked at the row of us, some looking back at her, some deep into our phones, and said, “I’d like to pray for Martin.”

It was an awkward moment. I mean, we pray as much as the next family, but not in public. In church, yes, and we say grace before dinner when we’re with our parents — I’m not sure what the siblings do at home — and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us were saying silent prayers, even as we were checking our email or crushing candy. My brother Larry--or Lawrence, as Melanie insists on calling him--obediently stood, as did my father, and then my mother. My sisters and I fell into line, all grasping hands, until finally the brothers-in-law rose awkwardly to join us.

I’m not sure who rolled their eyes first; it might even have been me, in a moment of conjugal communication with Bill. But it brought a smile to the face of my brother-in-law Gerald, which spread to Bill and then Sheri. Then Dan, Martin’s dad, who’d been looking somber as a tombstone, did that little spitty thing you do when you’re trying not to laugh, followed by Bill doing the unthinkable and guffawing. I glanced with alarm at Jocelyn. She was looking from Dan to Bill to Sheri to Gerald, her eyes, still red from crying, open wide. And then she giggled. And around the circle, like bubbles when the water’s starting to boil, we all started laughing. We didn’t dare look at Melanie, but I knew she had a tight little smile on her face, like she was fondly tolerating us but pissed off underneath. 

Before I knew it, my laughing turned into crying, and I hugged Jocelyn, who was crying now, too. Then Sheri came and put her arms around our shoulders, and Jocelyn and I brought in our mom and dad. The husbands shifted from foot to foot until they were noticed by their wives and drawn in. Then, finally, my brother and Melanie, holding a blinking Angelica like a toddler talisman, joined us. I smiled at her through my tears. What else could I do? Her stupid prayer idea had united us, led us to this release of grief and joy.

The doctor, who came out to tell us the surgery had gone well and Martin was in recovery, remained admirably composed and professional as he looked from one tear-stained, giggling, hiccupping face to the next. We hugged and sniffled and blew our noses, lingering for a while until Jocelyn and Dan waved us off; then we all went to Subway to get sandwiches for ourselves and a couple to bring back to them. We sat ourselves at a pair of laminated tables, and my father, after exchanging glances with Melanie, bowed his head and prayed. “Thank you, God for this food and thy many blessings. Watch over Martin, that he may heal quickly, and have mercy upon this family. In Jesus’ name.” And we all said “Amen.”
Click to go to Part 3 (Melanie)